Old boaties,does anyone know how to make a boat latch?

Question

I want to drive my boat right up onto the trailer and have it catch onto a device so I can get out and jump straight into the car and drive out of every ones way,tying the boat down later,I tried asking the young ones but they couldn't answer,just told me I didn't need one,lol.

Answer 1

I'm older than Dan, but I passed on your question the first time, mainly because I've never seen anything that is both safe and works everytime.  I've ramp lauched and recovered several thousand boats.  Yes! I said thousand.... I worked at a dealer where we had a ramp, so we would lanch and recover boats everyday, I've done 10 t0 15 a day lots of times.  You learn a lot of tricks, so you don't waste time.  We had a finger pier that ran along side the ramp, and I got very good at backing the trailer in, so that I could step off the boat, and walk back down the ramp to hook the winch to the boweye.  Oh! and I didn't get my feet wet.  Most people put the trailers too far in the water.  We had a lot of different boats and trailers, but I've found if the fenders are just out of the water, you can still drive the boat completely on to the trailer, all the way to the bowstop. And keep it there because the engine is in gear and still pushing farward. I'd step off, hook the winch up, give a crank or to, then walk back, step aboard the boat, shut down the engine, raise the drive or outboard, then go get in the van and pull the boat to the parking area.  It takes me longer to type this than it did to recover a lot of boats.  I guess the point is, there's no relilable latch that I've seen in 35 years, so I learned the best way to do it, by trial and error, until I got good at it.  I used roller trailers and a dodge van.  Good luck!  BUT Listen!

Answer 2

How old do you have to be to answer this? I answered the post before this one, and apparently you decided that my answer was not from someone who was old enough. I suggest that you go back and re-read my answer, as I am over 60.

I also told you what the draw-back was of what you are trying to do.

Regards,

Dan